At BRICS, India’s task is to keep the Ukraine peace process moving

Why in the News

The Prime Minister has again urged the Russian President to end the war in Ukraine, at their meeting in Bishkek on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit. Two envoys of the U.S. President travelled to Moscow and Kyiv over the same weekend carrying fresh peace proposals, and the guns briefly fell silent during that visit. The U.S. President has followed with a call to the Russian President asking for a swift end to the war so that U.S.-Russia ties can be restored. After more than four and a half years, the war is edging towards the negotiation of an endgame. India chairs BRICS this year, the grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa now expanded to eleven members, and hosts its summit in New Delhi this weekend. The settlement itself will be written elsewhere.

Where does the American peace track stand?

1. The 2025 process paused rather than ended: The Alaska process of 2025 produced the Anchorage summit, successive plans and counter-plans, and negotiating rounds at Geneva and Abu Dhabi.
2. Six months of lost momentum: The American initiative stalled as Washington’s attention was taken up by Iran. The U.S. was drawn into the West Asian theatre as a belligerent.
3. The file has been reopened: The U.S. President’s follow-up call to the Russian President confirms the return to Ukraine. A plan or at least a ceasefire may now emerge from a trilateral seating the U.S., Russian and Ukrainian Presidents in one room.

Why did the last bargain collapse?

1. The reported “3+2” formula: Circulating accounts described the Russian President reducing Moscow’s demands to Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk, with Zaporizhzhia and Kherson beyond that.
2. The Donbas is the sticking point: Russia holds Crimea and insists on the whole of the Donbas, including ground it has not taken.
3. The trade that was offered: Russia offered to let Kyiv keep the parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia it could not capture, against an easing of sanctions.
4. Kyiv refused: The U.S. Secretary of State has admitted that Ukraine would not agree. Washington can keep the parties in the room. It cannot make Kyiv cede the Donbas, nor make Moscow accept less than it believes it has won.

What has India actually done, and on what reasoning?

1. A shuttle inside the American track: The External Affairs Minister travelled from Moscow to Kyiv days before the American envoys set out, urging dialogue and diplomacy and carrying a message between the two capitals.
2. No branded Indian plan: China, Switzerland and Turkey each proposed peace frameworks of their own and each effort stalled. India worked inside the existing U.S. peace track instead, offering to help only if both belligerents asked and keeping the Americans informed.
3. The energy position: India holds that cutting oil imports will not stop the war, that its citizens’ energy security is not negotiable, and that sanctions for their own sake are no substitute for diplomacy.
4. The growth argument: Conflict anywhere threatens the growth trajectory on which India expects to reach developed economy status within two decades.

Why does the Global South claim a stake in ending this war?

1. Energy and food costs travelled outward: The war raised energy prices and struck the security of food and fertiliser supplies well beyond the theatre.
2. Balance sheet damage in uninvolved states: It fed inflation and sovereign debt stress in countries with no part in the fighting.
3. Institutional erosion: It frayed the multilateral institutions that smaller states depend on for dispute settlement and finance.
4. Peace as a global public good: Nations with no soldiers near the Dnieper have paid a heavy price, and that gives them standing to press for a settlement.

What can a BRICS chair actually deliver?

1. India will not be in the room: The settlement will be authored in Washington, Moscow and Kyiv, and sealed in a trilateral of the three Presidents.
2. Representation rather than mediation: India’s nudge is an act of representation for a constituency that is watching, is affected, and wants the guns silenced. It is not a claim to a mediator’s role.
3. The summit seats belligerents and no mediator: The New Delhi summit will seat Russia from the European war and Iran from the West Asian one, and neither the United States nor any other mediator.
4. The deliverable is a text: India’s task is to steer a summit declaration that reflects the reality of these conflicts, does not echo the case of any single party, and carries a collective call for peace.

Challenges to the Ukraine peace process

1. A ceasefire needs monitoring that nobody has agreed to provide: A line of contact running over a thousand kilometres cannot be policed by a declaration. Eg. The Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015 were monitored by an unarmed Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) mission that logged violations without being able to stop them.
   The Fix: Settle the verification mechanism, its mandate and its funding in the same document that fixes the ceasefire line.
2. Security guarantees for Kyiv have no agreed form: A guarantee that is political rather than legal collapses at the moment it is needed. Eg. The Budapest Memorandum of 1994 gave Ukraine assurances in exchange for surrendering Soviet-era nuclear weapons, and those assurances carried no enforcement obligation.
   The Fix: Write any guarantee as a treaty with named guarantors and a stated trigger for action.
3. Sanctions relief and territory move on different clocks: Sanctions can be reimposed and ceded territory cannot be recovered, so the sequencing decides who carries the risk. Eg. Under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action of 2015, relief was staged against verified nuclear steps, and the U.S. exit in 2018 showed how fast staged relief reverses.
   The Fix: Tie each stage of relief to a verified and reversible step, with a dispute mechanism agreed before the first stage begins.
4. Europe funds the outcome without negotiating it: The party carrying reconstruction and refugee costs has no seat in the trilateral that would settle them. Eg. European Union states have hosted over four million Ukrainians under temporary protection since 2022.
   The Fix: Seat the parties that will fund reconstruction and enforce sanctions in the negotiation that creates those obligations.

Conclusion

Wars end at a table, and the immediate question is whether one is kept standing. The chair of a plurilateral grouping cannot summon belligerents, and India has not claimed that it can. What a chair can do is put the cost borne by uninvolved states on the record of a summit that both a European and a West Asian belligerent will attend. Watch whether the New Delhi text speaks for the affected rather than for a party.

About BRICS

1. What it is: BRICS is a plurilateral grouping of major emerging economies that coordinates positions on global governance. It began as an investment category and became a geopolitical bloc.
2. Origin and evolution: The acronym “BRIC” was coined in 2001 by a Goldman Sachs economist. Foreign Ministers first met on the margins of the UN General Assembly in 2006, and the first Leaders’ Summit was held at Yekaterinburg in 2009.
3. Membership: South Africa joined in 2011. Expansion was agreed at the Johannesburg summit of 2023, with Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates joining in 2024 and Indonesia in 2025, taking full membership to eleven. Saudi Arabia participates with its formal status left nuanced, and a “Partner Country” category was introduced in 2024 for states such as Malaysia, Thailand and Nigeria.
4. Weight: The grouping holds over 45 percent of the world’s population, about 37 percent of global GDP in purchasing power parity terms, ahead of the G7’s share, and roughly 42 percent of global oil production and exports.

Institutional Initiatives of BRICS

1. New Development Bank: Headquartered in Shanghai, it lends for infrastructure and sustainable development in member and partner states, and has approved over $35 billion in loans.
2. Contingent Reserve Arrangement: A $100 billion facility that provides short-term liquidity support to a member under balance of payments pressure.
3. BRICS Pay: A cross-border payment system in pilot stage, intended to settle trade outside the SWIFT messaging network.
4. Partnership on New Industrial Revolution: A cooperation track on artificial intelligence, digitalisation and green technology. A BRICS Space Council was added in 2025 to coordinate deep-space and lunar research.
5. BRICS Vaccine Research and Development Centre: Set up during the pandemic to support technology transfer and vaccine access across members.

Challenges in BRICS

1. Internal rivalries block strategic cohesion: Two of the largest members carry an unresolved bilateral dispute into every common position. Eg. The India-China boundary dispute has kept security cooperation within the grouping nominal.
   The Fix: Prioritise health, space and education cooperation, where a common position is available without settling the political disputes first.
2. Members run incompatible political systems: Joint declarations cannot carry a common position on human rights or democratic norms. Eg. India and Brazil sit as electoral democracies alongside Russia, China and Iran.
   The Fix: Confine declarations to areas where a shared position genuinely exists, and record differences rather than negotiating the text down to nothing.
3. Slow de-dollarisation: The shift to local currency trade is far behind the rhetoric around it. Eg. The U.S. dollar still settles over 80 percent of global trade.
   The Fix: Deepen bilateral local currency settlement in trade flows that are already balanced, such as rupee-rouble and rupee-dirham arrangements, before attempting a common unit.
4. Expansion risks a talk shop: A wider membership lowers the common denominator of any agreed text. Eg. The Non-Aligned Movement widened steadily and lost the ability to produce decisions.
   The Fix: Formalise admission criteria for Partner Countries, so entry follows economic synergy rather than geopolitical alignment.
5. No charter and no permanent secretariat: The grouping runs on an annual rotating chair and its summit declarations, with nothing tracking implementation between them. Eg. The European Union operates through standing institutions and binding instruments, and BRICS has neither.
   The Fix: Create a small standing secretariat to carry implementation of declarations across chairs.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2026, GS2, 10.0 marks] “BRICS acts as a powerful counterweight in global governance, actively amplifying the voice and influence of the Global South.” Explain the role of BRICS in projecting itself as an alternative to other groupings.”